Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeremy Hicks, Professor of Post-Soviet Cultural History and Film, Queen Mary University of London

The famine of 1932-33, known as the Holodomor, claimed the lives of millions of people in Ukraine. It was not due to climactic failure, but caused by the confiscation of grain, punitively targeted by the Soviet government and its leader Joseph Stalin at Ukrainians.

Yet it is not universally recognised as a genocide. This lack of consensus stems both from historical debates over whether Ukrainians were deliberately targeted, and from political considerations surrounding the recognition of genocides.

It is nevertheless an important historical event, memory of which serves to unite Ukrainians as a nation. However, one factor preventing wider recognition of the Holodomor as a central moment in 20th century history is the lack of compelling treatment in film.

This is in sharp contrast to the Holocaust, where film was key in cementing its place in both Jewish and wider consciousness.

It is productive to compare depictions of the Holodomor with those of the Holocaust. Like the genocide of Jewish people, the murder by famine of Ukrainians was a crime denied and covered up by its perpetrators, in particular through bans on filming and photography.

When Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, its foes uncovered and publicised extensive evidence of its crimes. The Soviet Union didn’t collapse until 1991, however, over 50 years after the Holodomor, making its documentation harder.

This meant the first films on the subject were made by the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada: The Unknown Holocaust: 10 Million Victims, Ukraine 1933 (1983) and Harvest of Despair (1984). Both included groundbreaking interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses, but also used a number of images depicting Russian victims of the earlier famine of 1921-23. They also quoted widely circulated estimates for the number of victims that have been shown to be inflated.

This left the films open to criticism from deniers who claimed the famine didn’t happen, as was the official Soviet line. The shortcomings of the films weakened their case for the Holodomor and restricted their impact.

These films were further limited by being made outside Ukraine, where the subject was still banned. Following the Glasnost (the policy of greater freedom of expression inaugurated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR from 1985) Ukrainians in Ukraine were also able to make films about the subject, even before the collapse of the Soviet system.

Initially they focused on eyewitness testimony with the notable film, 33rd. Witnesses’ Testimonies (1989). The film starts by showing images from 1921, saying that that famine was filmed, unlike that of 1933, and then concentrates on interviewing eyewitnesses.

This was swiftly followed by the first acted film depicting these events, Famine 33 (1991). It was released on the eve of the Ukrainian independence referendum and is seen as contributing to the overwhelming endorsement of independence (including by Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk).

However, despite its political impact, the film is not great. Part of the problem is the difficulty of channelling cinema’s spectacular nature and orientation towards entertainment to the task of depicting mass death and suffering. It’s the same challenge confronted by films about the Holocaust.

The films that get it right

The highly influential mini-series Holocaust (1978) was condemned for using actors to portray death by famine, trivialising immense suffering by adapting these historical events to norms of TV entertainment.

Famine 33 and the more recent international production Mr Jones (2019) have not succeeded in producing memorable representations of the terrible events of the Holodomor, but that does not mean the task is impossible.

The most successful film representation of the Holodomor is the 2008 documentary film The Living, directed by Serhii Bukovs’kyi. Its great merit is that it avoids images of famine victims and any hint of a sensationalist emphasis on cannibalism, a chilling, but repeated feature of famines that is dwelt upon in most other films.

Instead it conveys the events through eyewitness testimony, both in interviews with survivors and accounts produced at the time, contrasted with Soviet propagandist films proclaiming that all was well. The interviews enable us to get to know the elderly Ukrainian peasants before they later recount the awful things that happened to them.

It also avoids the word genocide and the debate on total death figures. The resulting film invites viewers to reflect empathetically, rather than imposing conclusions.

In making this film, Bukovs’kyi built on his previous experience making Spell Your Name (2006). That film was about the Holocaust in Ukraine where more than 1.5 million Jewish people perished. He used the testimonies collected by Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation to make the film.

Bukovs’kyi’s work explores how memory of these two catastrophes that afflicted Ukraine can be reconciled. Previous films of the Holodomor implicitly competed with memory of the Holocaust.

By contrast, the Russian state is implacably opposed to memory of the Holodomor. It removes monuments to it wherever it can in occupied Ukraine, as expressions of Ukrainian identity and sovereignty separate from Russia. The fourth Sunday in November, Holodomor Remembrance Day, acquires particular significance in this context, not just for Ukrainians.

As well as official ceremonies, commemorative events and lighting a candle, film screenings across media are part of the activities and play a vital role in conveying memory of this tragic history. Engaging with it and watching these films defies Russian attempts to suppress this memory and deny Ukraine’s sovereignty.

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Jeremy Hicks receives funding from the Philip Leverhulme Trust, The British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). He is a member of the Labour Party (UK).

– ref. The Holodomor on screen: how cinema shapes memory of Ukraine’s famine – https://theconversation.com/the-holodomor-on-screen-how-cinema-shapes-memory-of-ukraines-famine-269239

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Miguel Valdez, Lecturer in Technology and Innovation Management, The Open University

Autonomous self-driving cars and taxis are already on the roads of San Francisco and Beijing. There are also autonomous tram-style services around Oxfordshire and Dubai.

Now researchers in the Italian city of Trento are planning to pilot a scheme of autonomous 17-seater shuttle buses which can divert to the homes of travellers. The first stage of the “robot buses” pilot is expected to cover the historic city centre, where approximately ten vehicles powered by clean hydro-electric energy will operate for up to 18 hours per day.

The pilot is expected to be initially funded by government grants to demonstrate the reliability of this type of vehicle, improving user acceptance so the service could then use private funding to grow to move beyond the city. The starting date is not yet confirmed.

The plan is that members of the public would use an app to call for an autonomous, AI-driven bus to pick them up. A similar transport system already exists using human drivers (for example, there is an app-based Bus on Demand operating in Coventry, UK). Some on-demand bus services, such as Mi-link in Oxfordshire, even use autonomous vehicles, but not to the level of digital integration being explored in Trento.

The Trento pilot plans to use smart roads around the city, part of a national project, where the roads communicate with the autonomous vehicles so that they can have the data it needs to make split-second decisions. This provides driverless vehicles with information about unforeseen events and allows complex coordination and collaborative manoeuvres where driverless vehicles communicate with the roads and with each other.

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Read more:
Self-driving buses that go wherever you want? How the UK is trying to revolutionise public transport

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The idea behind the project is that one-to-one replacement of cars or taxis with autonomous vehicles would add a bit of convenience but would not do much for congestion or emissions. It could even be counterproductive if the increased convenience encourages people to travel more.

A more positive scenario is possible when AI enables new transport models such as the driverless shuttle. The Trento team estimate that replacing 100,000 private petrol cars with 5,882 shared electric shuttles could potentially yield around a 92% annual CO2 reduction – an impressive figure, but one that can only be achieved if riding a shuttle becomes more attractive and convenient than driving a car.

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Read more:
Driverless cars: what we’ve learned from experiments in San Francisco and Phoenix

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Conventional bus services simply are not a sufficiently attractive alternative to car use outside the dense centres of major cities. as they are often infrequent and don’t come close to people’s homes in many cases.

If a new type of public transport could offer a better alternative, then more environmental benefits could emerge. Think of a system where you don’t need to conform to bus timetables and operating times – or even bus routes. The bus comes to you when you call it and takes you where you want to go. Driverless taxis can offer that, but at a higher cost not only financially, but also in terms of congestion and energy consumption.

The planned Trento design is where you have small shared autonomous vehicles offering travel at bus level fares – or lower. The use of driverless vehicles offers potentially radical improvements to the cost and quality of the service that could result in people preferring this type of shuttle to driving their cars.

Small driverless shuttles could operate more frequently and flexibly and even operate a 24/7 service. As the plan is to combine bookings to pool the journeys of passengers going in the same direction, the cost of the ride (which was already low on account of not paying for the driver) becomes even lower for a shared ride.

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Read more:
AI can boost economic growth, but it needs to be managed incredibly carefully

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Vehicle automation is perceived as having potential risks and benefits. On the one hand, there is a clear risk that jobs in the transport industry will disappear. On the other, autonomous transport will help ensure that people without cars or those unable to drive can maintain access to work.

This kind of public transport system that offers a convenient alternative to personal car use would substantially reduce environmental impact, reduce congestion for all and make for more socially inclusive towns and cities. As the service provides a level of convenience close to that of a taxi, but a cost similar or lower than that of a bus, the possibility of moving society away from car dependence could become more realistic.

Environmentally, it has been estimated that adoption of driverless vehicles in major cities could result in a reduction of up to 34% of the total carbon emissions from transportation by 2050.

What’s happening elsewhere?

Globally other systems are being explored and are likely to emerge in the next few years. Milton Keynes in the UK already operates a small vehicle service booked by app.

The service creates “virtual bus stops” that pick up and drop passengers in locations that are close to their homes and are also convenient to other passengers sharing the same vehicle.

Unlike the Trento service, the service in Milton Keynes is operated by human drivers. Potentially, this limits the flexibility of the service as humans cannot, and should not, operate 18 hours a day without breaks and the number of drivers available limits the size of the fleet.

There are plans to expand this with small autonomous buses on fixed routes, but trials so far have always had a human driver on board for safety purposes.

Projects, such as the one in Trento, plus other emerging autonomous vehicle service systems, start to move cities towards a reinvention of public transport using high-tech advances. This means public transport could appeal to more people if it becomes more convenient and cheaper. It, therefore, has the potential to persuade more people to leave their cars at home, with big benefits for the planet.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Robot’ buses could bring more environmental benefits than public transport with drivers – https://theconversation.com/robot-buses-could-bring-more-environmental-benefits-than-public-transport-with-drivers-268809

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

Delhi: 442. Lahore: 334. Beijing: 16. These are the levels of PM 2.5, one of the principle measures for air pollution, on November 19.

As Pakistanis and Indians struggle with hazardous air quality, in Beijing – a city once notorious for its smog – the air quality is currently rated as good.

Ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government was so concerned about pollution that it introduced temporary restrictions on cars, shut down factories and stopped work on some construction sites. The measures worked and one study later found that levels of air pollution were down 30% during the period when the temporary Olympic restrictions were in place.

It would take a few more years before the Chinese government implemented a clean air action plan in 2013. Since then, China has achieved a dramatic improvement in its air quality.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Laura Wilcox, a professor at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading in the UK, to understand how China managed to clean up its air pollution. But Wilcox’s recent research uncovered some unintended consequences from this cleaner air for the global climate: the pollution was actually helping to cool the atmosphere and by taking it away, it may have accelerated global warming. Wilcox explains:

 What we’re seeing is a removing of cooling that’s revealing warming that’s already there. So the air pollution isn’t the cause of the warming. It’s just letting us see stuff that we’ve already done.

Listen to the interview on The Conversation Weekly podcast. You can also read an article by Laura Wilcox and her colleague Bjørn H. Samset about their recent research on The Conversation.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany, Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from Voice of America, CBC, AP Archive, ABC (News) Australia, WFLA NBC Channel 8 and
PBS.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Laura Wilcox receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Research Council of Norway, the Clean Air Fund, and Horizon Europe.

– ref. How China cleaned up its air pollution – and what that meant for the climate – https://theconversation.com/how-china-cleaned-up-its-air-pollution-and-what-that-meant-for-the-climate-270170

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sam Phelps, Commissioning Editor, International Affairs, The Conversation

This newsletter was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

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News broke this week that US and Russian officials have been working in secret on a new plan to end the war in Ukraine. The terms make grim reading for Kyiv. Reports suggest the plan requires Ukraine to cede the territory it currently controls in the east of the country and halve the size of its military.

Such a deal would be a major setback for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He has declared repeatedly that conditions identical to those outlined in the plan are non-starters for Ukraine. Yet it’s possible he may soon have little choice but to accept them.

Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko, who are two regular contributors to our coverage of the war in Ukraine from the University of Birmingham and the Odesa Law Academy respectively, explain: “Ukraine is having a very difficult time at the moment on various fronts.”

Russian forces seem set to capture the eastern city of Pokrovsk, and they are simultaneously ramping up pressure on several other frontline areas. “For now,” write Wolff and Malyarenko, “the war of attrition clearly favours Russia.” But they do not see Ukraine’s imminent collapse as a foregone conclusion.

In their view, the Ukrainian war effort is threatened more by the continuing fallout from a sweeping domestic corruption scandal, as well as stalling efforts in Brussels to provide additional financial aid to Kyiv. Wolff and Malyarenko worry that talk of Ukraine’s political and military collapse could turn into a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.

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Read more:
Ukraine and Europe’s weakness exposed as US and Russia again negotiate behind Kyiv’s back

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The outlook is much more positive over the border in Russia, according to Matthew Alford, a lecturer in politics at the University of Bath. This was the impression he took away from his visit to Moscow earlier this year.

In this account of his trip, Alford recalls seeing no indication that western sanctions were having any impact on the Russian economy. “Moscow felt safe, orderly and technologically advanced,” he writes, describing how his hotel had a room service robot and people pay for the metro through facial recognition.

More obvious was the deep separation between Russia and the west. Alford recalls a conversation he had with an academic there, who said her students were already starting to learn Chinese instead of English.

This rift was a source of sadness for many of the people Alford met in Moscow. But there was a sense of resolve, too. “It seems all sides have become accustomed to the deathly chill of a new cold war.”

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Read more:
An east-west divide deeper than the cold war: what I saw on my summer trip to Russia

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Plans for Gaza

Elsewhere in the world, it has been a busy week for Donald Trump. Following a UN security council vote on Monday, the US president now has a legal mandate to implement his plan for a post-war Gaza.

This paves the way for a Trump-chaired transitional authority to oversee the management of Gaza for the next two years. It also authorises the deployment of peacekeepers there, who will form an international stabilisation force to secure the territory.

The plan provides for the “full resumption” of aid into Gaza, while offering Palestinians at least some hope of their own sovereignty in the future. The UN resolution references a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”, reportedly following pressure from Arab states.

We asked Leonie Fleischmann, a senior lecturer in international politics at City St George’s, University of London, whether Trump’s plan does in fact raise the prospects of Palestinian statehood. She was guarded in her optimism, telling us there is plenty of room for this path to be knocked off course.

In Fleischmann’s view, there are four main barriers to establishing a Palestinian state. The first is that all of the main sticking points to a two-state solution, including the status of Jerusalem and the “right of return” for millions of Palestinian refugees living abroad, have yet to be ironed out.

Second is that meeting the conditions required for a political process towards Palestinian statehood to begin – namely, reforming the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank – will be no easy feat. The PA is plagued by rampant corruption and is deeply unpopular among the Palestinian people.

Third is Hamas’s rejection of the UN resolution and subsequent refusal to disarm, which Fleischmann says threatens to derail the peace process entirely. And fourth is that the Israeli government remains staunchly opposed to a Palestinian state.

“We are a long way off from concrete discussions of Palestinian statehood,” Fleischmann concludes. But Trump’s plan does provide some hope “that at least the Palestinians in Gaza will be able to begin to rebuild their lives”.

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Read more:
UN backs Trump’s plan for Gaza but Palestinian statehood remains a distant prospect

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Epstein files

Trump also signed a bill this week ordering the release of investigative files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Their release, which the US president has spent weeks trying to stall, will be welcome news for the many people in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (Maga) base who have long wanted to see the documents.

In this piece, Alex Hinton of Rutgers University in the US explains why the Maga movement is so concerned with Epstein. Hinton, who has been writing about Maga for The Conversation in the US for years, points to the importance of conspiracy theories to Maga thinking.

“If you look at Epstein, he’s where many of the conspiracy theories converge: Stop the Steal, The Big Lie, lawfare, deep state, replacement theory,” Hinton says. “Epstein kind of hits all of these – that there’s this elite cabal orchestrating things that ultimately are against the interests of ‘we the people,’ with a sort of antisemitic strain.”

Trump had a personal friendship with Epstein, which has fuelled speculation that the files may contain information that compromises him. But, crucially, Hinton says the files are unlikely to dent loyalty to Trump – regardless of what they say.

“The bottom line is there’s a realisation among many people in Maga that you’ve got to stay with Trump,” he says, adding that the movement will “fade away” without him. “I don’t think there’s going to be a break over this, but it certainly adds strain.”

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Read more:
Why MAGA is so concerned with Epstein − and why the files are unlikely to dent loyalty to Trump

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– ref. Are things falling apart for Ukraine? – https://theconversation.com/are-things-falling-apart-for-ukraine-270207

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jon Gluyas, Professor of Geoenergy, Carbon Capture and Storage, Durham University

Imagine powering long-haul aircraft and heavy ships with fuels derived from just air, water and renewable electricity. This is moving from science fiction to the verge of reality, thanks to the falling price of renewables like wind and solar.

Whereas burning today’s fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere that has been sequestered underground for millions of years, these “e-fuels” would be more environmentally friendly, adding and subtracting carbon from the air in roughly equal quantities.

We’re seeing a glimpse of the future in HIF Global’s Haru Oni project in the south of Chile, backed by Porsche and ExxonMobil. It uses wind power to produce synthetic methanol and gasoline, marking one of the first commercial e-fuel ventures. Similar projects are under development in North Africa, Iceland and the Arabian peninsula, targeting export of e-methanol and e-kerosene.

E-fuels sit within the broader category of synthetic fuels, which are vital for sectors like aviation and shipping that won’t be able to switch to electric power or clean fuels such as hydrogen any time soon.

Synthetic fuels are chemically similar to the energy-dense liquid fuels these modes of transport currently rely on, though its equally possible to produce gases. They still only comprise a tiny share of fuels in these sectors – for instance, around 0.3% of global jet engine fuel was synthetic in 2024.

This is expected to change dramatically in the coming years, potentially rising as high as 50% by 2050. In the meantime, each synthetic fuel comes with trade-offs that affect their costs, scalability and the time to reach the market.

The alternatives

The two other main varieties of synthetic fuel are known as biochemical and thermochemical.

Biochemical fuels are derived either from processing waste fats and oils, or using fermentation or enzymes to transform things like crops and organic waste into alcohols. In both cases, there’s a final step that involves adding hydrogen, in a process called catalytic hydrogenation.

The supply chains are well established for this kind of production, but there’s a lot of competition for the raw materials. They have to be grown on land or water that would otherwise be used for food. Even under optimistic assumptions, these won’t satisfy global demand for sustainable fuels alone.

Thermochemical production uses high temperatures to convert wood residues, waste biomass or even plastics into syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen). This is then converted into liquid fuels through an industrial process such as Fischer–Tropsch, in which they are heated and run over a catalyst like cobalt.

There’s no need for food feedstocks here, and the industrial processes are proven. However, you must still collect and transport large volumes of feedstock, while the high-temperature plants are expensive. As it stands, the vast majority of today’s synthetic fuels are therefore biochemical, mostly from reprocessing oils.

E-fuels

E-fuels are the newest option. Many leaders in global energy expect them to play a central role in decarbonising aviation and shipping – especially as biomass feedstocks reach their limits. The challenge is that making e-fuels is energy-intensive and currently expensive, particularly where renewable power is scarce or costly. Here’s how it breaks down:

1. Carbon dioxide capture

Capturing and concentrating CO₂ requires about 1-3 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy per tonne, which is fairly significant. Using commercially supplied CO₂ is about one-third the cost of capturing it from the air, so hybrid approaches that use some commercial CO₂ will probably take off first. Commercial CO₂ is usually a byproduct from burning fossil fuels, so this has an environmental downside.

2. Hydrogen production

Even the best methods for extracting hydrogen from water operate at about 70% efficiency. This means that 50–55 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity are needed to produce 1kg of hydrogen, which stores only 33 kWh of chemical energy – in other words, considerably more energy goes in than out. This is one reason why making fuels from electricity will probably never be as cheap as using direct electrical power.

3. Compression, storage and transport

Hydrogen must be compressed or liquefied, consuming additional energy (for example, around 10–13 kWh per kg of hydrogen for liquefaction). Hydrogen is also prone to leakage and can embrittle steel pipelines, making long-distance transport difficult.

4. Converting carbon dioxide to fuel

The captured and concentrated C0₂ is converted into fuel by reacting it with hydrogen – or it can first be reduced to carbon monoxide in a catalytic “fuel synthesis” process. In both cases, the resultant product can be an alcohol such as methanol, or a more complex hydrocarbon such as a mixture of paraffins or waxes. Dependent on the desired final product, further processing may be necessary. These steps require high temperatures and pressures, adding energy demand and capital cost.

In sum, each of these four processes compounds energy losses. Until green electricity gets much cheaper, e-fuels will remain a premium product.

In the US and UK, electricity prices are currently around four times greater than natural gas, whereas in Europe it’s about 2.5 times greater. Roughly speaking, e-fuels will remain more expensive than fossil fuels until these prices reach parity. Electricity prices incorporate manufacturing and distribution costs as well as taxes, so we’ll need reductions across the board.

Synthetic fuels comparison

The good news is that the cost of green power should keep falling as the technology gets more efficient. In aviation, recent analysis predicts that most sustainable fuel will be biochemical or thermochemical until 2040, but after that most growth is likely to come from e-fuels. By 2050, these could make up over half of all synthetic fuels.

E-fuels could be made in regions rich in renewables such as North Africa, Patagonia and Iceland — creating new players in the global energy trade. A whole ecosystem involving everything from large-scale renewables to fuel logistics will have to be scaled rapidly to make this industry viable.

In short, the chemistry works but the economics are still catching up. And while e-fuels are an exciting prospect, they’re not a silver bullet. Governments and the energy industry will still need to prioritise the switch to electric power and greater energy efficiency wherever possible.

Jon Gluyas is a named but unremunerated director of sustainable aviation fuels startup Exergic Ltd. There was a significant contribution to this article from Jon’s friend Neil Fowler, a retired industrialist.

– ref. Fuel made from just air, power and water is taking off – but several things are holding it back – https://theconversation.com/fuel-made-from-just-air-power-and-water-is-taking-off-but-several-things-are-holding-it-back-269326

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Haomin Wang, Lecturer in Economics, Cardiff University

Whatever decisions Rachel Reeves makes in her second budget as UK chancellor, it is clear that she needs to find lots of money. Some argue that the best and fairest way of doing this is to raise the taxes of the country’s wealthiest people.

Others feel that such a move will do further harm to the UK’s longstanding problem with productivity, by discouraging investment and entrepreneurship.

Economists describe this as the “equity-efficiency trade-off”, where taxes designed to promote fairness may come at the expense of efficiency and growth, by distorting incentives for work and investment.

But our research suggests that some of the very highest earners can simply ignore that trade-off – because the tax system gives them so much flexibility and choice about what they pay. In the UK for example, the way a business is organised has major implications for how it is taxed.

Sole traders (like a plumber or a freelance writer) and partnerships (an accountancy firm or a garage) are known as “pass-through” businesses. They do not pay corporation tax, with profits instead being passed to the owners and taxed as personal income (at 20%, 40% or 45% depending on the amount).

Limited companies are taxed differently, with profits subject to corporation tax (currently 25% for most firms). And within these parameters, company owners can then choose how they get paid.

If they take a salary, these are taxed as employment income but are deductible from company profits, therefore reducing the corporation tax base. And if they take their pay in the form of dividends, a portion of the company’s profits, these are taxed at lower rates (8.75%, 33.75% or 39.35%).

This flexibility allows entrepreneurs to legally lower their tax bills by adjusting both their business structure and how they take income – whether as salary or dividends. In practice then, wealthy business owners can reclassify their income or reorganise their firms. This gives them much more scope to manage their tax liabilities than ordinary wage earners.

Another difference between the two set-ups is that limited companies tend to be more complex and costly compared to pass-through businesses. But they also enjoy better access to finance, which allows for greater investment and expansion. So when entrepreneurs choose their business structure primarily to reduce taxes, they may sacrifice growth opportunities.

Our research into how entrepreneurs respond to taxation found that when entrepreneurs choose a business structure mainly for tax purposes, it can have an adverse effect on investment.

For example, someone may prefer to avoid the “double taxation” of corporate profits and dividends by remaining a pass-through business. But this limits access to credit and constrains expansion, resulting in a business which operates below its potential.

Fairness and flexibility

We also found that tax avoidance undermines the effectiveness of higher top tax rates. For when governments increase personal income taxes, wealthy business owners can simply restructure their income – by taking less salary and more dividends.

As a result, higher rates do little to raise revenue from the very richest. And regular employees, who cannot reclassify their income, end up carrying a relatively heavier burden.

Our work also suggests that when avoidance opportunities are closed – by aligning the tax treatment of different business forms – governments can raise more revenue and, at the same time, improve productivity and welfare. In other words, well-designed tax policy can promote both fairness and efficiency.

So perhaps discussions about how to raise revenue should move on from its traditional focus on introducing new taxes on wealth or increasing top income tax rates. After all, these kinds of measures may not achieve their goals if those on high incomes can exploit gaps in the tax code to reduce their liabilities.

Instead, with the UK’s economic pressures and rising inequality, politicians should note how existing rules shape incentives and behaviour.

A more promising route may involve revisiting how different forms of income are treated within the current system. Aligning the taxation of salaries and dividends for business owners, and reducing distortions between business structures, could improve both fairness and efficiency.

This would ensure that the tax system rewards productive entrepreneurship – rather than financial engineering.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. One small change Rachel Reeves could make to close tax loopholes and raise revenue – https://theconversation.com/one-small-change-rachel-reeves-could-make-to-close-tax-loopholes-and-raise-revenue-268079

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Turns, Senior Environment Editor, The Conversation

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.

As the UN climate summit Cop30 progresses in the Brazilian city of Belém, there’s much debate about the specifics of climate finance targets, whether the transition away from fossil fuels really can be ethical and how renewables are shaping the global economy. Luciana Julião, editor at The Conversation Brasil, has been busy meeting scientists and experts in Belém, the host city in the heart of the Amazon. She shares her behind-the-scenes insights.

What’s it really like on the ground there, aside from negotiations?

This is a huge event with two official venues. The first is the blue zone, where each country has a pavilion with their own event programme featuring academics, activists and environmental changemakers. This is also where the diplomatic negotiations are taking place.

It’s enormous – about the size of 17 football pitches. Discussions have ranged from the mathematical modelling being used to design disaster alerts to the new tech that’s bringing renewables to traditional communities.

About a mile away from that, the other official venue is the green zone which is open to the public. Slightly smaller (the size of 14 football pitches), this is where side events take place, with representatives from environmental charities and other movements plus universities.

Events are happening all over the city and free buses are shuttling delegates and participants between venues. For example, the free zone is a cultural space where there have been artistic gatherings, cultural shows and Brazilian food. The agrizone is a hub for discussions about farming and food production. The science house is inside the beautiful Emilio Goeldi museum of Pará, the first botanic garden in Brazil. And the Cúpula dos Povos (people’s summit) at the Federal University of Pará (home to the world’s biggest Amazon research centre) is where Indigenous communities are hosting events.

Which side events have been most fascinating?

Kerstin Bergentz, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is doing her PhD in physical oceanography. At an event in the ocean pavilion, we spoke about how, even though half of the air we breathe comes from plankton, the oceans don’t get a mention in the Paris climate agreement or in most Cop negotiation texts.

“[The ocean is] such an important part of our climate system and our global earth system, but it’s still not getting enough attention on the global climate agenda,” says Bergentz. “We are all 65% water, and billions of people around the world rely on the ocean for their daily food, for sustenance, for their way of life … [The ocean] has absorbed 30% of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions and 90% of the excess heat associated with those emissions.

“Why do we talk about the Amazon rainforest so much but we don’t talk about the ocean? Maybe [it’s partly] a marketing issue … [because the oceans don’t get as much attention as land-based climate issues]. I also think it’s the fact that 41% of the ocean is in what’s called EEZs or exclusive economic zones. So that’s 200 nautical miles from the coastline, right? And that’s governed by individual countries.”

That, she explains, leaves almost 60% of the ocean – the high seas – as no man’s land. “That’s the biggest ecosystem on this planet, but who’s going to be responsible for that?” Of course, in 2026, a new high seas treaty is due to come into force which heralds a new era of ocean governance – if states can balance conservation with a growing scramble for deep-sea resources.

Another session that really resonated with me was about environmental racism.

Mauricio Paixão, professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, is studying how the consequences of intense floods in 2024 in Brazil’s most southernmost state are far from fair. “We hear a lot in Rio Grande do Sul, that the disaster was democratic, that it affected rich and poor, white and black, but in practice, despite affecting everyone, the recovery was not and is not being equal for all these groups.”

He has been observing how environmental racism has unfolded in two badly affected neighbourhoods: Menino Deus, a wealthy part of the city, and Sarandí, a poor neighbourhood with a large presence of Black people among its residents.

While the disaster affected everyone, the cleanup took longer to reach the neighbourhoods with the largest Black population. Paixão says that it’s “impossible” to separate the economic issues from the social, ethnic and gender issues. “When the water receded two weeks later, it looked like Menino Deus had never experienced a flood before, while Sarandí was still covered in accumulated garbage and mud. This is a very clear indicator of environmental racism.”

He spoke about removing ideas of intention from the environmental racism debate: “I can’t conceive that someone in a management position would say or think, ‘I’m going to take an action thinking about harming the Black population.’ I don’t think that happens. The idea of environmental racism isn’t in the intention, it’s in the consequence. So the fact that people in management positions don’t consider the demands of Sarandí because they are unaware of the demands of Sarandí, shows a disconnect from reality. And if you’re not connected to what’s happening in the city, you’re going to commit an injustice, and injustice in a racialised context implies environmental racism.”

Who is here, who is not?

Officially, 194 parties are here (that is 193 countries plus the EU delegation, out of a total of 198), with 56,118 delegates registered. But there are not many leaders of those nations present. According to official stats, presidents or official representatives are here from only about 70 countries. The absence of the US president is the most noted and commented on. There are so many people here from Indigenous and traditional communities coming closer to climate negotiations than ever before.

What is the Amazon setting actually like?

Belém is in the forest. Take a small boat for a few minutes, and you can navigate through its rivers to an island covered in tropical forest. It’s a wonderful experience.

It’s a very hot city with temperatures around 30-34°C. It’s humid here so it feels so much hotter than that. It also rains a lot. People here in Belem have a saying that they have two different seasons in the year: one in which it rains every day and another in which it rains all day long.

Right now, it’s raining every day. There’s lots of sunshine but usually in the afternoon, rain is torrential and fast. Then within about 15 minutes, the sun is shining again. People often joke when making arrangements by asking, when are we going to meet, before or after the rain?

Is the atmosphere one of hope or frustration?

I’m not covering official negotiations, but the many scientists and participants I have been talking to have told me two things. First, this is the Cop with the highest presence of Indigenous and traditional people. This elevates their perspectives and contributes to a feeling of hope rather than frustration.

Second, this Cop30 needs to be the Cop of implementation, not just discussion. We already have enough paperwork and knowledge, now it’s time to put those decisions and insights into practice and make the changes happen.

So we still don’t know if there will be any significant advances, but I can tell you the feeling is of hope. Let’s see. Time will tell.

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– ref. Behind the scenes in Belém: The Conversation’s report from Brazil’s UN climate summit – https://theconversation.com/behind-the-scenes-in-belem-the-conversations-report-from-brazils-un-climate-summit-269869

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Brown, Associate Professor of Medieval History, Durham University

In medieval England, peasants on some estates were entitled to a range of sick, annual and bereavement leave that could rival those of many workers in the UK today.

British workers are among the least likely in Europe to take sick leave, and lose an estimated 44 days’ worth productivity every year through working while sick. And although most workers are entitled to at least 28 days of annual leave, there is currently no statutory right for employees to take bereavement leave except after the loss of a child under the age of 18.

By comparison – as our new paper shows – peasants on the estate of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire, England, were entitled to up to a year and a day of leave from working on the lord’s lands if they were sick. Meanwhile widows were granted leave upon the death of their husbands and workers enjoyed plenty of religious feast days and festivals every year.

Not all peasants enjoyed the same level of benefits. Leave entitlements were negotiated between lords and their tenants. Practices, therefore, varied between manors across medieval England. Elsewhere, arrangements were less generous than on the Ramsey estate, and tenants were more generally entitled to a fortnight or month of sick leave.

At the other end of the spectrum, some peasants received no leave if they were ill, such as the tenants of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, who were instructed that if “he is ill nevertheless, he will do the labour services he owes”.

Customary tenants – known as villeins – were required to perform unpaid work on the lord’s lands in lieu of rent. These obligations were known as labour services or “works”. Depending on the size of a tenant’s landholding, they might be required to work for between a day and three days per week.

The above entitlements did not constitute paid leave in the modern sense but, because tenants were not required to work on the lord’s lands while they were sick, they were effectively excused from many of their rental obligations.

When were peasants sick?

A high number of absences were recorded during the harvest on the Ramsey estate. This may have been for a variety of reasons, including that peasants were overworked and succumbed to exhaustion during the busy harvest season.

With tiredness, workplace accidents that resulted in infirmity were also more likely. Lords may even have been more diligent in tracking absences during the crucial harvest period because replacement labour was so expensive. Finally, tenants themselves may have exaggerated their own illnesses in examples of sick-leave fraud.

Although tenants were entitled to a year and a day of sick leave on the Ramsey estate, most absences did not run for nearly so long in practice. Some sicknesses were very short, such as that of Richard Berenger who was ill for just two days after the harvest in 1343. He missed half a “work” on the lord’s lands.

In contrast, others suffered chronic and debilitating infirmities, such as Richard Colleson of Warboys in Cambridgeshire, who was absent for an entire year in 1347/48, missing 156 “works”.

Such sick leave could cost the lord if they were forced to find a replacement worker. For example, in the absence of the ploughman who was sick for 84 days in 1420/21, the accounts of Battle Abbey in Sussex record a payment of 14 shillings to a man hired in his stead.

Alongside sick leave, tenants were also entitled to a range of other absences. Widows were granted 30 days of leave from performing their labour services upon the death of their husbands. In an unusual example of compassionate leave one Agnes le Reve of Upwood in Huntingdonshire was excused from a single work on two occasions in the winter of 1342/43 because of two deaths in her household.

Peasants also enjoyed a wide range of feast days and religious festivals. In theory, medieval people were not supposed to work on such days, though in practice some were fined in the church courts for working, often on their own lands or earning additional wages on someone else’s lands.

The number of feast days observed varied widely, even between neighbouring manors. On the Ramsey estate, this ranged from just a handful of religious festivals a year to an upper number of around 30.

We should not eulogise the lives of medieval peasants. They were subject to many restrictions which were greatly resented and resulted in punishments such as leyrwite – a fine on villein women for fornication. Yet, given the harsh and repressive realities of life for many medieval peasants, it is all the more surprising that at least some of them were entitled to such a wide range of sick, annual and bereavement leave.

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Research for this article was conducted thanks to funding from a Leverhulme Trust research project grant, ‘Modelling the Black Death and Social Connectivity in Medieval England’.

Dr Grace Owen is a postdoctoral research associate on the Leverhulme-Trust funded project, ‘Modelling the Black Death and Social Connectivity in Medieval England’.

– ref. Medieval peasants enjoyed a surprising range of sick, annual and bereavement leave benefits – https://theconversation.com/medieval-peasants-enjoyed-a-surprising-range-of-sick-annual-and-bereavement-leave-benefits-260163

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nando Sigona, Professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity, University of Birmingham

The UK government’s latest proposals on asylum rest on an incorrect premise. In announcing them, home secretary Shabana Mahmood argued that “illegal migration is tearing our country apart”. But asylum-seeking is not illegal migration.

Asylum is a form of protection granted by a country to a non-citizen who faces persecution in their home country. The right to seek asylum is enshrined in international law, and applies irrespective of how the person travelled to the place where they are seeking protection.

Yet the policies being rolled out collapse two distinct categories into a single threat, to be addressed through deterrence and control. In effect, the category of the asylum seeker is equated to that of “illegal migrant”. Both are discussed as “abusing the system”, “flouting the rules” and “undermining communities”.

The underlying implication is that all asylum seekers are “illegal migrants”. Any system that follows will therefore be built on a distortion. Its consequences will fall not on the minority who try to game the system, but on the overwhelming majority who have legitimate claims for protection.

In 2024, 84,200 applications for asylum were made in the UK, relating to 108,100 individuals. More than 36,500 asylum appeals were lodged against negative decisions, with 48% of them allowed. Recent data show that in the months to March 2025, 47% of initial decisions resulted in the applicant being granted refugee status.

The new asylum measures promise faster decisions on asylum applications, tougher thresholds to be granted status, and expanded detention and removals. In continuity with the previous Conservative government, the rhetoric of “restoring control” makes the direction clear: restrict access to protection, harden the conditions for claiming it, and speed up refusals.

Labour is not hiding its reasoning for this approach. The government explicitly argues that firmer control is needed to prevent “darker forces” from coming into power. This is presented not as a concession to the far right, but as a public rationale for tightening the system. The message is clear: these policies are needed to keep politics steady, not because they improve the asylum system.

The issue is not simply that the proposals are harsh, unethical or likely to be ineffective. They represent a deeper shift: redefining protection as a discretionary favour rather than a legal obligation. Control becomes the primary focus, leaving less space for discussing refugee rights, protection and international obligations.

If asylum is framed as illegality, and settlement is reshaped into a privilege that must be endlessly earned, then our understanding of equal membership – the idea that those lawfully in the UK should enjoy stability and a clear path to full inclusion – is fundamentally altered.

A lifetime review

One of the key proposals is to extend the length of time it takes for a refugee to achieve settlement from five to 20 years. Until recently, settlement – the immigration status that allows a non-UK citizen to live, work and study in the UK without time restrictions – was the expected outcome for anyone granted refugee status. It is also a prerequisite for applying for British citizenship.

The new proposals transform settlement into something that must be continually earned. The path has become longer, more conditional and far more easily disrupted.

This aligns closely with other recent announcements on policies relating to migrants more generally. Higher salary thresholds, more enforcement, extended probationary periods and more complex routes to settlement have all been tabled.

These changes would build a structural disadvantage into the migration system. Non-citizens can live, work and contribute, but their belonging remains conditional. They become long-term residents on a form of probation, their status always open to review. This is more than an administrative change. It creates a hierarchy of membership that shapes lives, futures and families.

For a refugee family, this can mean years of uncertainty: parents unable to plan long-term careers or mortgages; partners and children living with the fear that a change in income, a missed renewal deadline or a shift in political priorities could jeopardise their right to remain.

It can also mean delays or barriers to family reunification, with spouses or children abroad left in limbo while the principal applicant waits to demonstrate continuous compliance. In practice, what should be a path to stability becomes a prolonged period of vulnerability, in which everyday life is overshadowed by the possibility of losing one’s status.

Nando Sigona receives funding from UKRI, Grant No.10061538.

– ref. Asylum is not illegal migration – why the UK government shouldn’t conflate the two – https://theconversation.com/asylum-is-not-illegal-migration-why-the-uk-government-shouldnt-conflate-the-two-270106

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicholas Ryder, Professor of Law, Cardiff University

Fraud is now the most common offence in the UK accounting for more than 40% of reported crime. In the year to July 2025, around 4.2 million people reported being defrauded in England and Wales.

Yet that’s probably only a fraction of the true scale of the problem. The National Crime Agency estimates that around 86% of fraud goes unreported, meaning millions more are falling victim without ever coming forward.

The effect is enormous. In the UK alone, fraud is thought to cost the economy £219 billion a year. Globally, fraud losses are estimated at $5.1 trillion (£3.89 trillion), which is more than 80% of the UK’s total gross domestic product.

Despite this, successive governments have failed to treat fraud with the urgency and seriousness it deserves. Over decades, policy responses have been fragmented, under-resourced and short-lived. The result is a system that’s struggling to keep up with the scale and complexity of modern fraud.

Fraud takes many forms. It includes online scams, phishing emails, fake investment schemes, romance scams, identity theft and fraudulent messages pretending to be from banks or government departments. The common thread is deception for financial gain. Anyone can be a target.

Fraud also fuels wider harms. It enables organised crime, money laundering and even terrorist financing. And because so many scams take place online, often across borders, they are hard to trace and also hard to prosecute.

The UK’s record on tackling fraud has been disjointed at best. Some of the foundations were laid in the 1980s with the Roskill report, which led to the creation of the Serious Fraud Office. But little political attention followed.

It wasn’t until 2006 that the Fraud Act modernised the legal definition of fraud, making it easier to prosecute. But the law alone was not backed up by a serious long-term strategy. It would be another 13 years before fraud returned to the political agenda in a meaningful way.

In recent years, several government publications have attempted to address fraud. These included both economic crime plans, the Beating crime plan and the fraud strategy. The home affairs select committee has also investigated the issue, while fraud was added to the strategic policing requirement.

This means that police forces are required to treat the threat presented by fraud as a top priority. But these efforts have lacked coordination, consistency and staying power. Each new initiative has tended to start from scratch, often with unclear leadership and no follow-through.

A system unfit for purpose

Many fraud victims report their case to Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime. But the service has been criticised as inadequate, difficult to use and slow to respond.

In 2023, the government released a new fraud strategy. It promised to reduce fraud by 10%, replace Action Fraud with a new reporting system, recruit 400 police officers to join a new national fraud squad, and collaborate more closely with tech firms and telecoms providers to tackle online scams.

Although they appeared to be positive steps, they wouldn’t go far enough. One think tank, the Social Market Foundation, estimated that tackling economic crime effectively would require 30,000 officers and £3.5 billion per year.

Much of the government’s fraud policy also relies on voluntary agreements with tech and telecoms companies, such as the online fraud charter and certain provisions in the Online Safety Act 2023. But voluntary measures are no match for the scale of the threat.

Why has so little been done?

There are political reasons why fraud has not been treated as a priority. For one, it lacks visibility. Unlike violent crime, fraud rarely makes headlines. And many fraud victims blame themselves. Tackling fraud also means taking on powerful industries, from social media platforms to banks, which successive governments have often been reluctant to do.

Short-termism in politics hasn’t helped either. Since 1986, the Home Office has had 20 different home secretaries, each with limited time to make a difference and many other competing priorities. This constant churn has made it hard to sustain any long-term plan.

Even the current government’s “Plan for Change” – published in December 2024 and an important policy roadmap – made no mention of fraud at all. That silence speaks volumes.

Fraud has changed considerably over the past few decades. It’s become faster, more global, more digital and more professional. But the UK’s systems are still stuck in the past.

A serious national response should include:

• a properly funded and well-staffed fraud reporting and enforcement system
• mandatory data-sharing between telecoms, banks and law enforcement
• robust public education campaigns to raise awareness and resilience
• a long-term plan that treats fraud not as an afterthought but as a national economic and security threat.

Some recent policies have made progress. There are new powers to gather information, better support for police and efforts to improve how the public can report scams. But these are not yet enough to close the gap between the scale of the threat and the ability of the authorities to respond to it.

Fraud is costing lives, livelihoods and public trust. Unless it is taken seriously – with the funding, leadership and coordination it demands – that cost will only continue to rise.

Nicholas Ryder receives funding from UKRI, the Joffe Trust and StopScams.

– ref. Successive UK governments keep failing on fraud – and the problem is only getting worse – https://theconversation.com/successive-uk-governments-keep-failing-on-fraud-and-the-problem-is-only-getting-worse-265822